Police have arrested a nurse for allegedly molesting two patients on the same day at a Brooklyn clinic, the New York Post reports.
Joseph Selmen, 31, is accused of violating the women while he performed colonoscopy exams in July at the Brooklyn Surgery Center in Bensonhurst, court records show.
He was arrested Aug. 6 on allegations that he molested a 57-year-old woman from the Crown Heights neighborhood in Brooklyn. He was arrested again Aug. 9 in connection with the second woman.
Selmen has been charged with multiple counts of forcible touching, harassment and sex abuse. He has since been released on $5,000 bond for each of the cases.
Howard Greenberg, the nurse’s defense attorney, claims the allegations are merely a misunderstanding and that his client is innocent of any wrongdoing.
“It’s a colonoscopy clinic!” the attorney told the Post. “If you’re the nurse, where are you going to put your hands in connection with this procedure to check for bleeding or something?”
Greenberg further said that the patients who believe they were victimized were under anesthesia and that their memories were “compromised at the time of the alleged attack,” the Post reports.
The two victims are patients of gastroenterologist Dr. Robert Kodsi, who has an office in the same building where the Brooklyn Surgery Center is located.
A spokesman for the Brooklyn Surgery Center said Selmen no longer works there. The center is “cooperating fully” with the New York Police Department’s investigation, according to the spokesman.